News

2009 Sydney motor show cancelled

Richard Blackburn, drive.com.au, February 3, 2009

This year’s Sydney motor show will not go ahead after cash-strapped car makers convinced organisers to alternate shows between Sydney and Melbourne. By RICHARD BLACKBURN.

This year’s Sydney motor show has been cancelled after pressure from financially strapped car companies forced the organisers to strike a deal with the Melbourne motor show to hold events on alternate years.

The Melbourne motor show will go ahead as planned later this month, but the Sydney show in October has been put back to 2010.

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), organiser of the Sydney motor show, and the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC), organisers of the Melbourne motor show, have formed a joint venture to run both shows, which will each be named the Australian International Motor Show.

The deal was brokered in response to a boycott of last year’s Sydney motor show by a number of car companies who wanted just one major motor show a year.

Eighteen brands failed to show in Sydney last year, including exotic drawcards Porsche, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Bentley and Rolls-Royce, as well as leading luxury brands Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi.

As a result, attendances were down by roughly 40 per cent on the previous year.

FCAI chief executive Andrew McKellar said the joint venture would allow both organisations to be involved in a “viable and sustainable” event, while maintaining the tradition and heritage of both shows.

He admitted that the new model “takes into account the views of the many vehicle brands who considered the proliferation of motor shows in Australia as being too costly.”

Car makers, faced with shrinking marketing budgets, had argued that if major shows such as Frankfurt and Paris could hold their car shows bi-annually, so could the two rival Australian cities.

McKellar admitted staging a Sydney motor show later this year would have been “fraught with difficulty”, given the state of the economy.

“There was an emerging consensus within the industry that we needed to move in this direction,” he said. m“We’ll get a better result in terms of what we can bring to future motor shows and that will be better for the public.”

He admitted that the non-attendance of key drawcards at last year’s show was a big factor in the drop-off in ticket sales, but said other factors were also in play.

“There were a number of factors that impacted on the show in Sydney last year. It coincided with the first real impacts of the global financial crisis.”

He said the staging of alternate events would ensure a high standard of exhibits, including the latest show cars.

“I think we’ve all learned from the [Sydney] experience. I think the determination of everyone concerned is that when we next present a keynote event it will be one of the highest quality and that’s why we’ve gone down this path,” he said.